‘How To Get Away With Murder’ Renewed for Second Season

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the breakout hit How To Get Away With Murder has been renewed for a second season by ABC, allowing the network to come one step closer to becoming all Rhimes, all the time.

While ABC has yet to make the announcement official, a brief ad that aired after last night’s season finale (embedded below) revealed that the show would return with new episodes. “Thank god we’ll be back with a whole new season of insanity,” the ad proclaims, and it’s not really that big of a shock, considering the show set a DVR viewership record for its pilot (review here) with a staggering six million viewers. This bumped up the total of viewers for the premiere from 14 million on the live broadcast, to more than 20 million overall.

How To Get Away With Murder is now the third hit on the ABC from producer Shonda Rhimes, after Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, all of which air on the same night. Created by Peter Nowalk and starring Viola Davis, the drama has been among the biggest hits on network TV this season. Between this and the unprecedented ratings success of Empire, as well as NBC’s windfall from the highest-rated Super Bowl of all-time, it’s been a pretty great season for the major networks, at a time where traditional TV models have been in decline. Maybe traditional methods of viewership are falling by the wayside, but it’s clear that the major networks still have shows viewers are willing to go out of their way to see.